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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27633457">Meritocrats/Harlequins</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984'>Miri1984</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Wilde Week 2020 [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Japan Gap, M/M, Pre-Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:01:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>862</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27633457</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A Wilde Week Day 5: Meritocrats/Harlequins | Virtues | Viciousness</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Wilde Week 2020 [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015986</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>A Wilde Week 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Meritocrats/Harlequins</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“You know, something I’ve been meaning to ask,” Zolf says, one evening at the inn. There’s been sake and good food - a successful supply run meant Zolf could cook using fresh ingredients and they’re both sated and relaxed, more so than usual. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am an open book for you, Mr Smith,” Wilde says, smiling his lopsided smile and waving a hand. He’s lounging - at ease with the Japanese custom of sitting on the floor for meals in ways that Zolf simply cannot be, unless he removes his prostheses first. He’s contemplating doing that, right now, although he’d have to put them back on again for the trek upstairs and he is too relaxed to bother thinking about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How’dyou even get to be a meritocratic agent? And why did you… what was with the…” Zolf makes a floaty gesture with one hand, trying without words to encompass everything that Wilde had been, way back then, with his orange socks and peacock waistcoats and dreadful puns.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wilde, to give him credit, laughs, obviously understanding the meaning behind Zolf’s gesture, and that simple understanding goes to Zolf’s head like the sake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was recruited at Oxford, actually,” he says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wot, Oxford professors are secretly meritocratic talent scouts?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Some of them, yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Were you like… I mean. At Oxford. Were you like you were afterwards? Or is that something you learned?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wilde’s face turns contemplative. “Well, I was very different before I came to Oxford, yes. Dublin’s a nice enough city but it doesn’t have the same…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“People?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Actually yes,” Wilde grins at him. “I was a native there, something I couldn’t be at Trinity, because, well. I don’t think I need to tell you the British upper crust’s attitude to those they deem… lesser.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Zolf snorts. “So you </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>Irish then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“A stór mo chroí,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Wilde says softly, and it’s Wilde’s voice, but it isn’t. Zolf doesn’t recognise the phrase, but he doesn’t know more than a few words of the language, a few families in the village had their origins there, and most of their elders only spoke in Irish to each other. Wilde's expression has softened, as though the act of forming the words has changed him somehow, and he's looking at Zolf intently, with a question in his eyes. When he seems satisfied that Zolf hasn't understood him, he smiles again. “Yes, I'm Irish. Born and bred, and my mother would be ashamed at how very English I sound these days.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can always go back to sounding the way you did,” Zolf says, a little gruffly. “There’s no one here you need to impress any more.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wilde shrugs, an easy, relaxed motion. “It’s gone. Mostly. Twenty years away from home will do that to you. Also a few sound beatings from your college peers who think the simple act of </span>
  <em>
    <span>not being English </span>
  </em>
  <span>is a threat to their… oh I don’t know, something or other. Purses? Dignity?” Wilde’s tone is light but Zolf feels a surprisingly strong surge of anger at his words, thinking of Bertie and people like him, the sort of people who looked down on others simply for being different. A year ago he would have put Wilde into that category without hesitation - to find that he is, in fact, very firmly not, is reassuring. Again, Wilde is looking at him, and Zolf squirms a little under that steady gaze. “You look angry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well I am,” Zolf says. “No one has the right to treat you like that.”</span>
</p><p><span>Wilde chuckles softly. “No, but they rather </span><em><span>think</span></em> <span>they do and that makes all the difference, doesn’t it?”</span></p><p>
  <span>“So did you join the meritocrats because you had what… a burning desire for justice or something?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I joined the meritocrats because I was good at it,” Wilde says. “And I was very very young and dragons are very very big and also quite beautiful. Beautiful, powerful things have always fascinated me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You didn’t believe in them? In what they were doing? I mean you’re happy enough being a Harlequin now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I believed they brought order to chaos. My time at Trinity taught me many things about the baser natures of humanity. As a young man it seemed prudent for us to be ruled by something other than ourselves.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just because a dragon is big, beautiful and powerful doesn’t mean it’s right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Zolf snorts again, at that. “What broke it, your faith in the meritocrats?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Paris,” Wilde says simply. “I mean, I had my doubts before then, but Paris was… something else entirely.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You were still there when…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Zolf remembers the shockwave and the fall afterwards, although he’d been in no condition to see what the others described to him afterwards. Paris had been a turning point for both of them, it seemed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The mood hasn’t exactly soured, but they sit in silence for a minute or two. Wilde sips at his sake, looking up at the ceiling, lost in memories, maybe. Zolf wonders if he’s thinking of Paris, or perhaps of Ireland, the home he’d left behind so thoroughly that the stamp of its speech has been wiped clean from Wilde’s voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Outside, the rain continues to fall.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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